


Taedium

by Verbal



Category: Legion of Super-Heroes (Comics)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Reboot, minor Threeboot and Retroboot elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4589433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbal/pseuds/Verbal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Querl reflects on the meaning of his family emblem. Drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taedium

Nights like these, when Querl is exhausted yet awake and laying on top of his neatly made bed, give him too much time. Sometimes he studies his own reflection in the full body mirror opposite the bed and traces the faintly glowing circles on his forehead, feeling the smooth coldness beneath his fingertips. Those circles have followed him throughout his life, first appearing on the robes he faintly recalls his mother wearing when he was born and then continuing to crop up in his ancestors’ notes and recordings; They show up in grainy news article clippings in the Superman Museum of Metropolis and adorn the memorials on Cairn, the ones everyone seem to have forgotten.

Sometimes that makes Querl’s blood boil. How everything his grandfather and great grandfather did and stood for has been swept under the rug so moronic humans can marvel at the original Brainiac’s crimes, immortalised in expansive displays as his family’s good legacy rots in the ground. How just the sight of his family crest even to this day makes them fear him, as if humans have the right to judge anyone for the actions of those that came before them. 

He sighs and lets his hand fall down onto the covers. When he first came to Earth he had fought it, had let his anger get the better of him, but it didn’t take long for him to figure out that lashing out at them was an ineffective strategy. Because apparently he was supposed to simply accept everything from the whispering and stares to the outright vitriol in the voices of strangers or they’d take it as an invitation to question his every move and thought. _Was he really so different_ , they questioned. _Would he really be upset if he didn’t sympathise with his ancestor_ , they asked. So he learned to bury most of his anger, to replace it with snide comments and a healthy dose of cynicism.

The circles had not changed much of that when they first appeared, though the emotional correctors that came with them certainly made it easier to ignore. In retrospective he loathed the correctors with his whole being but up until they malfunctioned he had been feeling ok. They _made_ him feel ok. But once he woke up in the hospital after the fall out with his mother he was right back to where he was before, anger and loathing flooding in to replace any semblance of serenity. And all that physically remains of them are three cold, slightly elevated discs etched to his forehead, a constant reminder to him and everyone else of who he is supposed to be. That he is nothing more than his legacy.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I completed anything and god am I rusty. But well, it's something.


End file.
